Nobody ever pitches a TV show thinking it’s going to be an epic disaster. People always start out with a good, or maybe a great, idea. And some shows just... go way off course. It’s a complicated process akin to juggling live hamsters, and mistakes are made. Which TV show had the greatest potential and just didn’t…

On the night of June 11, 1962, three inmates escaped Alcatraz aboard a makeshift inflatable raft. They were never seen again and are believed to have died in the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay. But a new computer model using historical tide data indicates they had a narrow time window to make it safely to land.

Just like with movies, you sometimes see a few television shows about the same idea come down the pike. Recently, we had two "supernatural child" shows (Touch and Believe), and a handful of supernaturalmedicalshows. But here are 10 TV show ideas that keep coming back again and again.

On July 20th, I rode in a cab from my apartment to San Francisco's Aquatic Park; struggled into a wetsuit; took a ferry to Alcatraz; jumped off the boat into the Bay; and swam the mile-and-a-half back to shore. I also wore a GoPro on my head for good measure. Here's what it was like.

On this very night exactly 52 years ago, three inmates escaped from Alcatraz, the maximum-security prison set smack dab in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. Their bodies were never found, dead or alive. That means John Mason might be the only man known to make it off the island successfully and survive.

We loved the unaired pilot for the TV show based on Joe Hill's comic Locke and Key, but now its existence could be preventing us from getting the recently announced Locke and Key movie. Apparently the film studio, Universal, is worried the pilot could be released just in time to steal the movie's thunder.

This week, we return to the Star Trek universe that J.J. Abrams rebooted using time travel. And meanwhile, Abrams is adapting Stephen King's book 11/22/63. So it's a great time to ask: How does time travel work in the Abrams-verse? If you're in a J.J. Abrams story and you build a time machine, what should you expect…

What if the creator of Harry Potter met the originator of Alias and Lost, on the field of battle? Assume that Rowling gets to wield any item that's introduced in the Harry Potter books. Meanwhile, Abrams gets any device from his TV shows, but nothing from Mission Impossible, Star Trek or Star Wars. Who ya got?

I don't really have much to say about last night's episode of Fringe. It felt... half baked. And not in a delicious chunky ice cream way. More in a "we threw in a bunch of ideas to see if any of them would stick to something" way. Spoilers ahead...

People always complain about Fox pulling the plug on their most beloved science fiction TV shows, from Firefly to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The thing they always forget is that Fox also took a chance on some risky genre projects, which is why it had those favorite shows to cancel in the first place.

Clark Gregg promises that you'll love The Avengers. A Dark Knight Rises rumor is 100% confirmed. An Alcatraz showrunner reveals what to expect next season... if there's a next season. Plus photos for Dark Shadows and Cabin in the Woods!

Alcatraz so often felt like a bargain-basement Lost — even down to the music and the frequent Jack Bender visual touches. Not to mention the power of Jorge Garcia. And yet, the makers of this time-traveling jailbird show seemed totally oblivious to what made Lost such an addictive show: its compelling characters,…

It's finally here: Game of Thrones season two. You watch, or you die. (Or rather, you're dead to us.) But also, a brand new Spider-Man cartoon launches, featuring Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson and J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson! Not only that, but Leonard Nimoy is returning to the role of Spock in the weirdest way…

We know Tony Stark survives The Avengers — but who else can we be reasonably sure survives the Joss Whedon Death Touch? A list of major characters in Iron Man 3 gives us a major hint. Plus Chris Hemsworth discusses the dress sense of the Avengers, and Thor's journey.